Diagnosing a SAN problem requires a fair amount of information, because three different kinds of equipment are involved (hosts, storage devices and -- usually -- switches). When you present your problem to vendor tech support, it's a good idea to have all that information organized and at your fingertips.
So it pays to have a checklist of information that puts all of it on a single screen, or a single sheet of paper. In addition to the obvious -- the nature of the problem and the troubleshooting steps already performed -- here are some other things the checklist should include:
- The OS version and patch level of the host;
- The types of HBAs and their firmware and driver versions;
- The type of storage device, its firmware level and its serial number.
For the typical enterprise with one or a few SANs, the appropriate information can be pre-entered on the form. This is especially true of things like serial numbers, which may not be readily available to the person reporting the problem.
Brocade has a sample technical support checklist on its
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This was first published in October 2003